


Death, Dates and Distractions

by Lola_di_Penates



Series: CPC verse [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Boys Kissing, Draco Malfoy Has Issues, Draco Malfoy Needs a Hug, Gay Draco Malfoy, Gay Harry Potter, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley Friendship, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry Potter In Love, Harry Potter Loves Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter is Bad at Feelings, Harry Potter is Obsessed with Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter Friendship, Hermione Granger is a Good Friend, Lucius Malfoy Dies, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, POV Harry Potter, Ron Weasley is a Good Friend, Slashy, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25708117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lola_di_Penates/pseuds/Lola_di_Penates
Summary: Draco doesn't turn up to work, and that's just for starters.ORLucius Malfoy dies and Draco wants to avoid it, Harry doesn't know how to express condolences for someone who wasn't a terribly good person and Ron just wants to talk about telephone boxes.Another one shot based on the Draco/Harry in "Christmas Party Confessional" and "True Heirs, Tapestries and Toujours Pur," featuring banter, breaking and entering and lots of two boys kissing.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Series: CPC verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1710799
Comments: 7
Kudos: 90





	Death, Dates and Distractions

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what this one shot is trying to be. It's like i just picked up my laptop, started writing and couldn't stop. To be honest, I'm still not sure if it's any good but I decided to post it anyway. 
> 
> Enjoy my late night, sleep deprived, caffeine-infused Drarry extravaganza. 
> 
> Note: This story is based on the Draco and Harry in "Christmas Party Confessional" and "True Heirs, Tapestries and Toujours Pur." You definitely don't need to read those stories to have your teeth rotten by the fluffy content here, but I would highly recommend it regardless.

Harry supposed he should have seen the change coming. After all, things never stayed simple in his world for long. Harry hadn’t even managed to have a normal childhood before he’d discovered he was famous for being an indestructible infant and then thrown down the gauntlet to fight in a war he hadn’t started. 

The thought that he could have enjoyed more than three months of an extremely normal, clandestine, quasi-relationship with his former-school-enemy-turned-passionate-lover was really too much to ask of the universe.

On Friday morning he stepped out of the elevators at Level 2, mind already wandering dangerously close to the black hole which was his infatuation with Draco Malfoy. They had established a solid routine of barely acknowledging each other at eight-thirty, trading insults at twelve, making unnecessary trips past each others’ office at four and finally, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, turning up at Harry’s apartment around six to have dinner in a pretence of civility before snogging each other senseless. 

Of course, Draco never stayed long after that. He would floo back to the Manor and the charade would begin again the very next day. In a stunning turn of events, weekends had become Harry’s least favourite days of the week and he sulked around his house (and occasionally sulked around Ron and Hermione’s house) until Sunday night when he felt oddly buoyant at the thought of going back to work.

Surprisingly, the predictability of it did nothing to quell the fluttering, anxious excitement Harry felt every time he strode past Malfoy’s office in the morning. There would be a pause, an acknowledgement, and then he would continue on to his own office to begin grappling with the competing urge to spend all day fantasising about six o’clock and the requirement to actually _do work_.

Every Friday except this Friday, it seemed, because Draco simply wasn’t there.

Harry actually stopped dead in the hallway at the sight of Malfoy’s office. It was a strange thing to do, since Draco could easily have been doing just about anything else that he usually did at work and just wasn’t, right at that moment, at his desk. But the routine was a crutch for Harry, he would later come to realise. Each movement in the dance was tangible evidence that his feelings were _real_ and that they were reciprocated.

By twelve noon, Harry had done everything _except_ doing the urgent tasks which were piling up on his desk. He had taken multiple trips past Draco’s office (to no avail) and had been obsessively checking for interoffice memos. He had avoided talking to anyone else lest they realise how tense he was, but he was just about ready to open an investigation. Harry hadn’t remembered being this interested in anyone’s movements since his sixth year, but then again, that also involved an irritating, blond bastard and maybe the world (or Harry’s world at least) really did revolve around Draco Malfoy. 

By two, Harry couldn’t take it anymore and he found himself barging into Ron’s office just as Kingsley Shacklebolt, the recently appointed Minister of Magic, was leaving.

“Er,” Harry started, as his Kinglsey appraised him suspiciously. “I’ll just wait outside.”

“No need, Auror Potter,” Kingsley replied in his deep voice, swiftly rising from his seat opposite Ron and vanishing the chair. “I was just leaving.”

“Great!” Harry said, with too much enthusiasm. “Not great! I mean, thank you, Minister.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Ron biting down hard on his lip to stop himself from laughing out loud. It was only once Kingsley had left, Harry realised he wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject without seeming a little insane.

He settled on “Hi.”

Ron raised an eyebrow. “Christ, Harry, you’re wound up tighter than a werewolf at full moon. What did you put in your breakfast this morning?”

“Not sure,” Harry said hurriedly, evidently not catching on to the fact that Ron’s question had been entirely rhetorical. “Listen, have you seen Draco today?”

“Malfoy?” Ron looked slightly stricken. “Bloody hell, it’s a bit harsh to expect him to come to work today, isn’t it?”

Harry stared, plainly confused. “What?”

“Well, I know you’ve got that weird thing where you need to know where he is all the time, but after last night…” Ron trailed off, looking at Harry as though he was a tyrannical workaholic. Given how little Harry had professionally achieved that day, nothing could have been further from the truth.

“What happened last night?” Harry asked, now feeling a bit thick. 

Ron looked stunned. “You managed to avoid seeing the front page of the _Prophet_ for the entire morning?” 

“You know I haven’t bothered reading the _Prophet_ since I had Malfoy hired to do that for me,” Harry said, an insidious feeling of panic now constricting itself tightly around his chest like a tendril of Devil’s Snare.

“Yes, but literally every other witch and wizard reads it mate,” Ron said, exasperation lacing his tone, “including the hundred odd people who would have walked through the atrium with you this morning, then the ten or so in the lift. Jenkins, in the office down the hall always has it open on his desk when you walk into the headquarters-”

“Ron!” Harry exclaimed. “A brief synopsis, if you will?”

Ron sighed. “Lucius Malfoy is dead, Harry.” 

“What?”

“Well, if you read the _Prophet_ you would have known this six hours ago.”

“I would rather read ten issues of The Quibbler each morning.”

“Interestingly, The Quibbler is reporting that Lucius died of a particularly vicious Nargle attack.”

Harry snorted and then quickly reflected that humour might be slightly inappropriate given the circumstances.

“So how did he...you know?”

“Snuff it?” Ron said, helpfully. “Don’t know, mate. St Mungo’s hasn’t released any information yet. You know how those Healers are with patient confidentiality. He could have been sick for years and nobody would have known it.”

An uncomfortable feeling, like a heavy weight, settled itself in Harry’s stomach. Surely Draco would have told him if Lucius had been seriously ill. But then again, they hadn’t divulged much about their family history outside the Black family tree (not that Harry really had much to contribute). Still, it didn’t sit well.

Later, Harry tried to write a letter of condolence to send to the Manor by owl. Unfortunately, despite the fact that he had seen far too many people die in the last ten years of his life, Harry really had no clue how to convey his feelings toward loss. Much less the loss of Lucius Malfoy who, in Harry’s honest opinion, wasn’t much of a loss at all.

Everything he wrote felt contrived, stiff and inauthentic. It felt like something Narcissa herself would write, Harry mused, although she probably went the extra step and wrote it all in French. Or blood. Maybe Latin. Latin was as archaic and useless as writing could get and there was hardly anything purebloods liked more than archaic practices.

In the end, fearing that he may be more emotionally inept than Hermione had ever accused Ron of being, he dropped his quill back into the ink pot and gave in to the mountains of tedious paperwork that he was actually being paid to do. He did question, as he worked, why wizards hadn’t managed to harness the muggle technology of mobile phones. A lot quicker and a lot less formal than owl post.

Ron found him again at quarter to six, buried in his work and with six broken quills piled up next to his right hand.

“I was going to make a working hard or hardly working joke,” he said, sounding slightly concerned as he surveyed what Harry imagined was something akin to a troll’s cave, “but it turns out its not as funny if you’re actually working.”

Harry, who had admittedly been trying to distract himself with his long-neglected administrative work, cringed at the sight around him. It looked as if he had been playing exploding snap with his reports rather than reading them.

“I think it looks worse than it is,” he said, mostly to reassure himself. He whispered a quick _finite_ to the metal bin under his desk that was smoking slightly.

“Definitely,” Ron agreed, although he didn’t sound convinced. 

Hermione poked her head around his office door and smothered a scream. Never mind Voldemort and a couple of Death Eaters, Harry thought, Hermione’s real worst nightmare was seeing paper being abused.

Ron, thinking on his feet, cast a quick _muffliato_.

“Harry!” she said, at a loss for words, gesturing wildly to the mountain of paper covering his desk and floor.

“I think for the sake of both of your sanities, we need to get out of here,” Ron surmised.

“There’s a plural of sanity?” Harry asked, politely. Hermione, mouth still agape, was looking from Ron to the paper to Harry back to the paper.

“Case-in-point,” Ron muttered.

~.~

Much to Hermione’s protestations, Ron managed to wrangle both of them out of the Ministry without too much of a hassle. He had insisted that Harry come home with them for takeaway on the couch.

There was a reason Ron was his best friend, Harry thought. If he had gone back to his apartment he would have forgotten to eat all together in his anxiety about how to deal with the Malfoy situation. Ron subconsciously knew when Harry needed to be reminded to eat, even if he didn’t want the backstory.

It was after seven thirty by the time they actually sat down to eat their mildly warm noodles. Rose had a tantrum over bath time and then it had taken Ron a solid thirty minutes to convince Molly that she didn’t need to be both their full time babysitter and personal chef. She protested and used Harry as an example by saying that he looked far too thin, but was eventually persuaded by Ron’s argument that Harry wasn’t in fact their child and actually, Harry never said that Molly couldn’t be _his_ personal chef.

Harry didn’t even bother to weigh in. He was just happy with the company.

It was halfway through the couch dinner when Hermione finally addressed the elephant in the room. It was lucky she did, Harry reflected, because he and Ron were possibly the two least likely people on the planet to discuss their feelings.

“So Harry, I know you’re upset about Lucius-” she began.

Ron spluttered. On what, Harry wasn’t sure because he didn’t appear to be drinking anything.

“Surely you’re not upset about _Lucius_ carking it?” Ron asked, once he had recovered from his random asphyxiation.

“Ron! Don’t be so insensitive!” Hermione exclaimed, looking apologetically at Harry.

“It’s ok!” Harry insisted, “I’m not upset that he kicked the bucket.”

Hermione looked stricken, no doubt taken aback by the casual references to death even when it related to someone she wasn’t fond of.

“-Xactly,” Ron said, swallowing a mouth full of chow mein. “I’m not sure anyone’s upset about Lucius being in the horizontal telephone box.”

Hermione looked as if she might have suffered an aneurism. “Can you not say it in a nicer way Ronald?” she asked shrilly and then hissed to Harry who had started smirking, “I’m sure _Draco_ is upset about Lucius’ passing, what about him?”

Harry felt a bit guilty after that and resolved not to think about Lucius being in a telephone box.

“I haven’t actually said anything to him yet,” he said, trying very hard not to look at Hermione.

“You haven’t even sent a letter or something?” she asked, incredulously.

“I wasn’t sure what to write,” Harry replied, feeling a bit stupid. He shrugged at Ron and Ron shrugged back, making Harry feel that perhaps he wasn’t alone in not knowing what to say when someone you didn’t particularly like packed it in but you just happened to be in love with their offspring. Such a circumstance required a very bespoke condolence letter Harry thought, and he had no idea how to even start one.

“Harry!” she exclaimed. “He’s your boyfriend for Merlin’s sakes, you have to say something!”

“He’s not Harry’s _boyfriend_ ,” Ron countered, although it was barely audible due to the quantum of dumplings which were occupying Ron’s mouth. Hermione looked mildly disgusted.

“Is he?” Harry asked, genuinely curious. He wasn’t sure how one established relationships in the post-war adult world where your would-be significant other was a war criminal and you were a war hero and so logically, you didn’t tell many people about it.

“How on earth are we supposed to answer that for you, Harry?” Hermione asked, exasperated. 

“Well I mean we don’t really talk about _that_ kind of stuff,” Harry started, “I mean aside from the one time I spontaneously told him that I was in love with him.”

Ron rolled his eyes. Hermione just nodded her head in understanding.

“But I think he likes me because he’s always turning up at my place and we always end up snogging for hours and then usually-”

“Stop!” Ron exclaimed, his hands looked as if they were involuntarily reaching for his ears.

“Ron, don’t be immature,” Hermione chastised, evidently disappointed at the interruption to Harry’s monologue.

“It’s like hearing about one of my family snogging!” Ron protested. “Like Ginny snogging somebody!”

“Funny that,” Hermione muttered, sarcastically.

“Anyway,” said Ron, clearly trying to change the subject, “maybe Malfoy doesn’t want to talk about it yet.”

“Yes, but it’s courtesy to send condolences when someone passes away, Ronald,” Hermione said in a way that said _you’d think we of all people would know that by now_.

“Maybe I’ll just wait until he brings it up,” Harry thought out loud, accidentally. 

“Sensible idea, mate,” Ron replied, nodding his head as Hermione sunk her head into her hands.

~.~

Harry didn’t end up leaving the cottage until ten thirty and by the time he stepped out of the floo in the kitchen of his apartment he was ready to drag himself to bed. That was until a shadow moved ominously in the darkness and he almost jumped out of his own skin.

“Fucking he-” he exclaimed, before realising that this intruder was more intent on accosting his lips than carrying out a violent home invasion.

Instantly, he felt himself relax as the familiar touch and scent and taste of Draco enveloped him and pushed him roughly up against the opposite wall.

“Where. Have. You. Been,” Draco demanded, words punctuated by rough kisses down Harry’s neck. Harry temporarily failed to respond as Draco attacked the soft flesh where his neck and shoulder met and he sighed in contentment.

“RonandHermione’s,” Harry mumbled, almost incoherently. He moaned softly as Draco bit down lightly on the sensitive spot on his neck. 

“It’s rude to keep me waiting, Potter,” Draco replied in the entitled way that Harry was so used to. Harry didn’t care in the slightest. His skin felt like it had developed its own electric current and quivered under every point of contact between them. His hand, almost of its own accord, reached up to thread itself through the pale blond strands of Draco’s hair.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise,” Harry whispered into Draco’s lips as he captured Harry’s with his again and pulled him in for a searing kiss.

When they finally pulled apart, Draco’s eyes smouldered in the dark as he looked Harry up and down appraisingly. “I’m here every Friday night, you twit.”

A small part of Harry glowed. Draco had evidently made a standing commitment to being here, even in circumstances where it would have been completely rational to fail to show up. 

“You weren’t at work today, though,” Harry said, reaching out to brush imaginary lint from Draco’s cashmere-clad shoulder as if he couldn’t bear to break contact, “and I sort of assumed that-”

“It’s ok,” Draco sniffed, cutting over Harry’s attempt at addressing the delicate situation. His lips touched Harry’s briefly again as one hand encircled Harry’s left wrist. 

“Can we relocate?” he asked, tugging Harry’s arm softly and leading him out of the kitchen. 

“Thank God I have you to guide me through my own house, Draco,” Harry remarked, following his lead.

Predictably, Draco took the bait. “Well you’re as blind as a fucking bat, Potter.”

“I can still see a snitch better than you,” Harry countered, playing on a predictable sore spot.

“You can’t _see_ it better than me,” Draco said, whirling around to face Harry mid-way up the stairs, “you’re just willing to do more idiotic things to catch it.”

Harry smirked at Draco’s irritated expression. “Maybe you were too distracted watching me to keep your eye on it?”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Draco said, snarling a little, “with the amount of things you accused me of doing you must have been keeping a _close watch_.”

It was lucky he never told Draco about the Marauders Map, Harry thought. He might have been somewhat put off to learn just how much time Harry had spent watching the D. Malfoy dot trail up and down the corridors.

“Not hard to keep a close watch on someone that’s always hanging around,” Harry replied, and before he could take stock of what was happening, Draco had spun around again on the first floor landing and bailed him up against a wall again.

“We’ve got to stop doing this,” Harry grinned at Draco’s face, irritation evident and inches away from his own, “I’m going to develop spinal problems.”

“They’re not the only problems you’re going to develop,” he heard Draco mutter as he pressed himself against Harry and collected his lips again, hands pinning Harry’s hips to the wall.

Harry reciprocated and, coaxing Draco’s lips apart, felt the hot slide of his tongue and honestly felt as if he might expire. With their fully clothed bodies pressed up against each other he could _feel_ almost every inch of it on his own and the aching swell of need pooled itself in his abdomen. 

Draco moaned a profanity into his lips as Harry’s hips moved against his, craving the contact. Draco pushed back and redoubled the urgency of his kisses, now trailing a line down Harry’s neck again and igniting little fires on Harry’s skin as he went. He reciprocated by lowering his hand on Draco’s lower back and pushing their bodies closer still, the heat and the hardness now painfully evident through their clothes.

Draco pulled away and Harry _actually_ whimpered, refusing to let go. Draco’s lips, deliciously red and swollen, smirked as he grabbed Harry’s wrist again, this time less gently, and pulled away from the wall.

“If we can’t get to your bedroom right now Potter, this is going to happen on the floor, and then where will your spine be?”

As it turned out, they did manage to make it to Harry’s bed, and Harry was saved from a certain herniated disc. He wasn’t particularly concerned with that fact, however as he allowed himself to be ravaged by Draco’s hands and his mouth. He felt like he was drowning in the most pleasurable way one could drown; lightheaded, unable to draw a proper breath and absolutely saturated with the presence of someone who made his body feel like it was floating. Like it wasn’t really attached to Harry’s head and it had a complete mind of it’s own.

It shouldn’t have felt this good, he reasoned. They were _adults._ It wasn’t like they had never had kissed other people, or touched, or been touched by other people. Harry was the first to admit he didn’t exactly have a plethora of sexual partners or intimate experience but that was largely due to the fact that he had been engaged in outright warfare for a good portion of his teenage years.

 _Christ_ , Harry thought. Was he seriously thinking about Voldemort? When, at that moment, he had a gorgeous, blond _something-or-other_ in the soft, white bed and deliciously warm on top of him? Were his usually compliant post traumatic stress related tendencies really rearing their ugly head when he would otherwise be revelling in the fact that Draco-bloody-Malfoy’s tongue was doing unspeakable things in his mouth and his heart felt simultaneously so full and warm and like it might spontaneously burst out of his chest?

That thought made Harry feel a bit selfish. Draco’s father, however questionable his attitude toward Harry may have been, had just _died_ , and here he was wishing that Draco would hurry up and take more of his clothes off. 

“Stop thinking,” Draco breathed as they came up for air, his ashy hair sticking slightly to his forehead.

Harry couldn’t help it, the guilt had well and truly set in.

“I just-” he started, as Draco groaned and intently pressed his lips on the sweet spot near Harry’s clavicle. Harry was well and truly shut up by this and moaned softly instead of finishing his sentence.

“Talking comes later, Potter,” he heard Draco whisper as his lips trailed kisses further down Harry’s chest as his hands found Harry’s belt buckle and released it easily.

Harry gasped as Draco pressed a kiss deep into the soft skin next to his hip bone.

“No wait,” he said, although it didn’t come out as convincing as he’d hoped. 

“Wait, Draco-” he pleaded again as his entire lower half of clothing was swiftly removed.

Draco, obedient for once, looked up at him, his head resting on Harry’s stomach. “What’s so important?” he whispered, lowering his lips to Harry’s stomach again but somehow maintaining eye contact.

It was so _fucking_ hot that Harry almost completely forgot what he was asking or why he was asking it. His body ached with a powerful combination of an insatiable hunger and unbridled pleasure and he wanted to eat all his words back into his mouth so he could stop making an absolute fool out of himself.

“I just,” he started, voice ragged and out of breath. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and-”

“Harry,” Draco replied, lowering his lips still, “please shut up.”

“Okay, if you want-”Harry said hurriedly, eyes wide and head nodding compliantly. 

Draco looked up and smirked, face centimetres away from Harry’s skin. “Do you really want me to talk about my feelings?” he asked, “or do you want me to put my mouth to good use?”

~.~

Harry didn’t think he had felt so conflicted in his life. Here he was, basking in the afterglow of a thirty minute tryst which had left both of them extraordinarily satisfied, and yet the anxious knot of worry had wormed its way back into his stomach and settled there like a rock.

Draco was in the bathroom, avoiding any kind of post coital interaction. This wasn’t unusual, on the contrary it was to be expected. However, Harry sort of wished he would have made an exception for once. Although, he supposed, it wasn’t _his_ father that had just died so he really wasn’t in the position to make any sort of suggestion. Grief was a weirdly personal thing, in Harry’s view.

After another five minutes had elapsed, Harry grew sick of thinking about death. So he picked himself up off the bed and went to look for Draco who was spending a suspiciously long time in the bathroom. He found the latter with his hands spread out over the basin, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

Harry leaned against the doorframe. “If you look any harder, you might fall in,” he said softly.

Draco closed his eyes briefly, sighed and turned around to face him, leaning back on the basin. “You, me, a bathroom. This is feeling oddly familiar,” he quipped, although the delivery was a bit cracked and scratchy. He tried to smile but it looked more like a grimace, Harry thought.

“That’s not funny,” Harry murmured as he took a step closer. “I could have killed you that day.”

Draco looked down at his hands. “Yes, well it’s lucky you didn’t. Who else would have been insane enough to wait for you for hours in your pitch black kitchen?”

Harry smiled in spite of himself. “You didn’t know this apartment had lighting?” he asked, playfully.

Draco’s eyes, still determinedly looking downwards, crinkled slightly in the corners. “You left me to scheme for too long. You know I have a flair for theatrics.”

Harry’s legs carried him forward, sort of their own volition. Running on instinct, he cupped Draco’s jaw in his hand and lifted his head upwards until the blue-grey and slightly bleary eyes were staring into his own green ones.

“Stay with me,” Harry said, more as a statement than a question.

Draco frowned slightly and looked away. “I don’t know if I should,” he said softly.

Harry thought of Narcissa, and a wave of guilt crashed over him again. Of course Draco should be with the family he had left. It was just that Harry had this inexplicable need to try and make it better. To try to help heal the wound and make Draco feel whole again.

He ran a thumb over Draco’s cheek. “I’m sorry. You’d need to get back to your mum-”

Draco laughed a little bitterly. “Mother is in France right now, Potter and there’s no way in hell you’re making me go there.”

Harry looked perplexed. “France?”

Draco sighed and grasped Harry’s hand in his own, lifting it away from his cheek. “It exhausts me to explain the intricacies of the Malfoy family tree. If we’re really going to do that, I need tea.”

Harry smiled and gestured towards the stairs. “Lead the way.”

~.~

“So your mother is with your French _cousins_?” Harry asked as the kettle boiled. He had cast a quick warming charm as neither of them had bothered to put the top half of their clothes back on. He swore the kitchen dipped into sub-zero temperatures, even in spring. 

“Why do you have an aversion to listening, Potter?” Draco replied rolling his eyes, “my _second_ cousins.”

Harry thought about this for a minute. He knew very little of his own family tree and so couldn’t really relate to the breadth of people that seemed to occupy Malfoy’s. It was as confusing as the Weasley's, he thought. Maybe it was a pureblood thing.

“So your father’s cousins?”

“Yes.”

“But your father was an only child?”

“Yes,” Draco replied slowly in way that suggested Harry was a bit thick, “but that has no bearing on the amount of children his aunts and uncles had.”

“Right,” Harry said as if he understood. It was terribly unconvincing. 

“Honestly, I don’t understand how someone so intelligent can’t grasp the simple concept of cousins,” Draco replied in an exasperated tone.

Harry put the lid on the teapot and turned around, a smirk plastered on his face. “I didn’t know you thought I was intelligent?” 

Draco scowled, narrowing his eyes. “I’m reconsidering my assessment as we speak.”

Harry laughed and leant back against the counter. Draco appraised him, sitting on a pulled out chair opposite, his long legs stretched out. The silvery tendrils of the scars across his chest glowed against the pale, white flesh, drawing Harry’s gaze. Harry simultaneously hated those scars and loved them, too. 

“So your mother is with your father’s cousins in France,” he repeated, in an effort to stop himself staring in such a lovesick way. “Why?”

Draco sighed and looked away again. “She wants to have him buried there.”

“Why?” Harry asked again, then reflected it may have been insensitive to ask such a question.

Draco laughed bitterly again. “Do you seriously think he could be buried here, Harry? The grave would be desecrated in seconds.”

Harry had to admit he hadn’t even thought of that. “Even on the Manor grounds?” he asked.

Draco shook his head. “The Manor isn’t what it used to be. Mother is in the process of having it completely rebuilt.”

Harry was stunned. The thought of destroying an old mansion which had probably been the home of Malfoy's for centuries was, in his mind, completely reasonable. But he had to admit, from a pureblood perspective it was highly unusual.

“Rebuilt?” he asked, tentatively.

Draco looked up and him and smiled, a little tense. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, of all people,” he said, “but being forced to co-habit with the Dark Lord changed the ambiance of things. It would be fair to say that it completely diminished the liveability of the place.”

Harry nodded. He had been fortunate enough to co-habit with Voldemort’s mind for the first seventeen years of his life. 

“So you didn’t fancy a trip across the channel?” he asked Draco, keen to steer the conversation away from the war. He was sure it was only a matter of expression, but it still made him slightly uncomfortable the way Draco referred to Voldemort as “the Dark Lord.” To Harry, it implied some kind of unshakeable reverence. 

Draco snorted. “Merlin, no. I despise going there.”

“Oh?” Harry asked, pouring the tea into two mugs and handing one to Draco. He crossed the room and dropped himself onto the chair opposite. “You don’t like your second cousins?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with them, _per say_ ,” he began, “they just think they’re better than everyone else.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up so high they might have disappeared into the mess of black hair.

“Don’t look at me like that, Potter. I know what you’re thinking,” Draco smirked.

“Your self-awareness astounds me,” Harry replied, drily. He wondered what this Draco thought about Hogwarts-Draco. It sounded as if the younger version of himself had drawn on some international inspiration.

Draco wrapped long fingers around his mug for warmth. “Well, these people tell me that I’m boring and _plain_. You have no idea how it wounds me,” he said, facetiously.

Harry spluttered on his tea. The idea that anyone could tell Draco Malfoy he looked _plain_ was quite frankly a crime. He wondered whether Malfoy had forgotten to tell him that his second cousins were also vision impaired.

“Plain?” he asked incredulously.

“Well I suppose I am somewhat unattractive compared to them,” he sighed, now staring judgementally at Harry who had summoned the sugar bowl and was lifting multiple spoonfuls of the granules into his tea.

Harry’s scoffed. “Of course you find your relatives attractive,” he said darkly.

Malfoy shrugged. “Objectively speaking. Please stop putting so much sugar in your tea it really is ghastly and all your teeth will fall out.”

Harry took a defiant sip of his tea, which was now at least twenty-five percent sugar. It tasted fantastic if you asked him.

“If they’re so gorgeous, why are you avoiding them?” he asked, trying to sound more blasé about the exchange.

“Are you jealous?” Draco grinned from over the top of his mug.

“No!” Harry exclaimed, a little too quickly.

Draco cocked an eyebrow. “My second cousins are all part-Veela,” he said. “You’d positively wet yourself over them.”

“Hey!” Harry protested hotly, feeling as if his loyalty had been unfairly brought into question. “You’re the one who keeps prattling on about how good-looking they are.”

“I’m just saying, from an impartial point of view-”

“You’re hardly impartial, you prat,” Harry muttered. 

Draco just laughed at him. “They just don’t do it for me, Harry.”

It was Harry’s turn to raise an eyebrow in response. “And what does it for you, Draco?”

Draco’s eyes glimmered dangerously. “Well, for some inexplicable reason,” he murmured, leaning across the table slightly as if to tell Harry a dark secret, “I have this _thing_ for scarheads with saviour complexes.”

Harry pretended to consider this for a second before leaning in himself. “I happen to know someone with an ugly scar on their forehead,” he said, “but they don’t like to share.”

Draco grinned sardonically in the semi-darkness and collected Harry’s lips with his own for a brief second. “Potter, I’m an only child. I never learnt how.”

~.~

Harry wasn’t completely sure of the events that precipitated the return to his bedroom, but he wasn’t complaining. The tea, along with any mention of Draco’s foreign second cousins, had been well and truly forgotten as they had lost themselves again in the peaks and valleys of Harry’s sheets until they’d wound up so exhausted and sweaty that Draco insisted the he _must_ shower immediately. Harry had insisted on joining him and before they knew it they’d overstayed their welcome because the hot water had suddenly run out and they had to make a hasty retreat back to Harry’s bedroom, cursing the sub-par pipes and Harry’s inability to remember the spell that would rectify the problem. 

Now Draco sat on his bed, shirtless again and as beautiful as he had ever been, but looking uncertain as he picked at the sheets between his fingers. 

“Stay,” Harry said again, from his position leaning against the headboard. He’d _scrugified_ the sheets to within an inch of their life on Draco’s insistence, but cleaning so thoroughly that it might have reduced the thread count evidently hadn’t been enough to convince him.

“Please,” he continued, feeling a bit pathetic. “If I’m horrible to sleep next to, you never have to stay again.”

Draco looked back at him. There was a small quirk of an eyebrow and Harry held out his hand which Draco took and allowed himself to be drawn back to the top of the bed. 

He paused as he lifted the sheets and the duvet up to slide under it and looked across at Harry.

“I don’t want to talk about it any more, Harry,” he said, giving him a look.

Harry nodded. He was sort of glad because he had been trying to find the right words to say about Lucius ever since Draco had jumped out at him in the kitchen, and he was still at a loss.

“I don’t really want to think about it properly yet,” Draco said, flipping over to lie on his back, grey eyes staring at the ceiling.

Harry wasn’t quite sure what kind of physical contact was going to be okay in that moment, so he just shuffled slightly closer and rolled over onto his side to face Draco. Feeling blindly through the sheets, he tentatively found his hand and threaded their fingers together, running his thumb up and down Draco’s forefinger.

“That’s okay,” he murmured.

Draco didn’t say anything else but sighed deeply, closed his eyes and settled into the mattress. 

Harry wasn’t quite sure at what point he fell asleep. He felt like he was staring at Draco’s profile for an eternity, wondering what was going through his head and whether it would be too much too soon to move closer. It wasn’t until the morning, that he realised at some point their bodies had acted of their own accord, because he found himself waking up tucked up behind Draco’s body with his left hand draped over his waist.

Utterly intoxicated by the closeness and the intimacy, Harry breathed in the familiar scent of sandalwood and citrus, and pressed a small kiss into the back of Draco’s neck. His nose felt the soft tickle of the tendrils of blonde hair that lay haphazardly across the pillow. Draco sighed softly, evidently still asleep, and wriggled back into Harry’s arms.

Despite the unfortunate circumstances, Harry couldn’t have ever recalled feeling so good on a Saturday morning. Here, with his arms around someone he never in a million years would have counted on _wanting_ , let alone _having_ , he had never felt so complete. There were no words to explain how right he felt, how at home and how comfortable, and despite the fact that his heart viscerally hurt to think about how the depth of his attachment might not be wholly reciprocated, he was at peace with it. He was totally, hopelessly and irrevocably in love in a way that he had never considered possible. 

Honestly, the way his life had turned out he was lucky to even have made it to his late twenties, Harry reflected.

Draco fidgeted again and Harry felt the long, lithe legs stretch out under the covers.

“Hello,” Harry whispered, touching his lips to the back of Draco’s neck again.

Draco let out a little sigh and reached a hand up to rub his face. “Your arm weighs a tonne, Potter.”

Harry snorted and lifted his arm off, shuffling backwards as Draco flipped over and propped himself up on an elbow to face him.

“God, your hair is even more haphazard in the morning,” he remarked, smirking.

Harry frowned. “I thought you liked my hair,” he said defensively, “and besides, there’s no point berating me for it, it never does what it’s told, anyway.”

Draco reached his free hand over to press part of it down. Predictably, it sprang right back up. He cocked his head slightly, as if trying to comprehend it.

“You know, nothing about this,” Draco said, gesturing between them, “makes a lot of sense, either. Doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”

Harry couldn’t help it. The frown he was wearing a second previously broke out into a smile that felt as if it stretched from one side of his face all the way to the other. 

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Draco asked, squinting slightly as the sun poked its way though Harry’s blinds.

Harry was tempted to say something very lovesick, but somehow avoided total embarrassment. He swore sometimes his brain told his mouth to say something, and the words got lost on the way there and came out totally differently.

“Just enjoying your sunny disposition,” he said, running his hand through his hair.

Draco narrowed his eyes and hit Harry over the head with a stray pillow. 

“Ouch!” Harry complained, ducking for cover. “If you want to dish it out, you need to be able to take it.”

“I’ll take you in a minute,” Draco muttered and raised another pillow overhead, menacingly.

Harry’s imagination jumped a little too far ahead and he felt his eyes go wide and his throat go very dry. He swallowed. Hard.

“Christ, I-” he said, voice an octave or so too high.

Draco dropped the pillow and smirked. “Yes?”

“I want to-” Harry started, but Draco cut him off.

“I’m sure you do, Potter, but I’m going to have to insist that you take care of that horrid morning breath first.”

~.~

An hour and a half later and Harry was chewing on a corner of white toast, eyes transfixed on Draco Malfoy who was sitting on his couch, legs tucked up underneath him, mug of tea in one hand and horribly out of date edition of The Quibbler in the other. It was a weirdly, lovely sight, Harry thought. He hadn’t a clue how they had managed to end up here, but he wasn’t going to start complaining.

If were possible, he would have liked to hide away here with Draco forever in their little bubble of domestic bliss with a side of sarcastic bantering and mind-blowing blowjobs. But Draco also wanted to be distracted, and Harry was determined to deliver if not for the sole purpose of being able to weasel his way into spending more time with him. 

“Do you want to do something today?” he asked Draco vaguely.

Draco looked up, a slightly suspicious look on his face. “What do you mean, _do something_?”

Harry smiled, a little bemused. “I don’t know. Something normal,” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Draco swallowed visibly and shut The Quibbler on his lap. “Nothing you do is truly _normal_ ,” he said, a little sadly. “You’re Harry Potter.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure where the issue lay. So instead he just threw caution to the wind and made the best assumption he could have, given the circumstances. 

“If you don’t want to be seen with me, we don’t have to go anywhere that people might-”

Draco coughed loudly. “Potter, I hardly think that’s the issue. What if people see _you_ with _me_?”

“Well, the Ministry’s Ethics Committee might be a bit difficult about it, but Hermione and I worked out that it’s fine because I’m not actually your superior and-”

Draco looked incredulously at him. “The _Ethics Committee_? Come on, Harry.”

“What?” Harry asked, genuinely perplexed. “I don’t want either of our professional conduct to come into question and I certainly don’t fancy accusations of nepotism because, if you recall, I was the one that suggested you for that position.”

“Who cares about the Ethics Committee?!” Draco shot back, clearly troubled. “What about the witches and wizards of England who adore you and despise me?”

“Oh,” said Harry, “I didn’t really think about that.”

“You really are an idiot,” Draco said. Harry noticed his voice was light but the sad smile still lingered. Harry hated that look. He wanted to kiss it right off his face.

“I don’t actually care what those people think,” he said, crossing his arms at the table. 

Draco sighed. “I know you don’t, because you’re the Chosen One and you can do whatever you like.”

“I’m not-” Harry started, then paused. He wasn’t sure if it really was the right time to say it because he wasn’t sure if they had really established what kind of arrangement they were carrying on here.

Draco looked at him expectantly. So Harry just said it.

“I’m not trying to hide you or anything,” he said bluntly. “I’m not, you know, embarrassed if people know we’re…”

He trailed of because he honestly really wasn’t sure what they were doing.

“What, having sex?” Draco asked, a look of genuine confusion on his features.

Harry flushed. He wasn’t sure why he felt so hot and prickly all of a sudden but there was something infuriating about being so in love with someone else and trying to lock it all up inside. 

“Well, obviously,” he said, stammering a little, “but also I mean, what we’re doing when we’re not having sex.”

“What, talking?” Draco drawled, raising an eyebrow in the fashion Harry was so used to. “What a crime, someone alert the Ministry.”

Harry groaned. He was finding this painfully difficult, and he had a sneaking suspicion Draco knew what he was getting at was just goading him into it, like usual.

“Draco.”

“Mm?”

“I’m not, you know, shagging anyone else.”

Draco, to his credit, looked genuinely taken aback. Maybe he wasn’t being a complete prat, Harry thought. He just said, “Oh. Me either,” and looked a bit sheepish about it.

Harry’s face softened. “Great. Good. I mean, okay.” 

Draco put down his mug and cleared his throat, looking completely at a loss.

“Do you want to go flying?” Harry asked, to break the tension. 

Draco nodded mutely, and that’s how they ended up disapparating to the wizarding village where Hermione and Ron’s cottage was and rapping on their door at midday.

“Hello Harry,” Hermione said as she answered the door, then noticed Draco lurking in the background, looking supremely uncomfortable.

“Hello Draco,” she said, coolly. 

“Hello Grang-Hermione,” he replied, tripping over his words.

Harry prayed that this wasn’t, in fact, a terrible idea.

“Ron’s not home, just so you know” she said, as if Ron would have been thrilled to see Draco Malfoy there, in the flesh.

“That’s fine,” Harry answered, a little too quickly. He never had been particularly tactful in awkward situations. “I just came by to grab my broom, and wondered if we could borrow another?”

Hermione motioned for them to come through. “Honestly Harry, take them all,” she pleaded.

Harry grinned at her as she lead them through the small cottage to the back door which opened onto a wide, expansive garden. It looked manicured to perfection, but Harry knew that was a testament to Hermione’s brilliant charms work. In fact, the garden beds were hiding a gnome infestation of gargantuan proportions.

They walked down to the small shed at the back of the garden and Harry rifled through the brooms as quickly as he could to avoid Hermione and Draco having to make stilted conversation with each other. He was desperately trying to eavesdrop as he pushed aside three ancient Cleansweep Sevens which went clattering to the ground.

He froze when he heard Hermione say, “I’m sorry to hear about your father, Draco,” and waited with bated breath for the response.

“You shouldn’t be,” Draco replied from beyond the garage door. ”To you, my father was nothing but was cruel and prejudiced.”

It wasn’t in an aggressive or defensive tone at least, Harry thought, but this conversation was on a one-way track to disaster. He pulled out the box of battered Quidditch equipment hastily and continued his search for a suitable broom.

Hermione paused, probably to consider what an appropriate response would be. Hermione was very clever like that, Harry thought. She actually bothered to consider her replies unlike Harry usually just said the first thing that popped into his head.

“You were nothing but horrible to me, Draco,” Hermione said evenly, “but I’d still be sorry if you died.”

Well shit, Harry thought. His heart was racing so fast he had forgotten what he was looking for and why he was in this dingy shed listening to what he was sure would be the next wizarding war breaking out behind him. 

To his great surprise, Draco seemed to agree.

“I hardly think you should be,” he said, “I wouldn’t deserve it.”

“Maybe not,” Hermione replied, “but I have Harry as a friend and I learnt to live with his questionable choices long ago.”

At that moment Harry spied golden scrawl on a handle in the back of the shed, reached in and pulled out a Nimbus 2001. Despite the mild panic attack he was still recovering from, he managed to smile. This ought to be good. 

Grabbing his Firebolt that sat on a rack below Ron’s matching one, he pulled out the two brooms and a small black box containing a snitch.

Draco spied the Nimbus and raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realise you wanted a full re-enactment, Harry. I would have worn more green.”

Hermione lifted the broom out of Harry’s left hand and appraised it. “I don’t think I even know where this one came from,” she said, in a concerned way before passing it to Draco who flipped it over between his hands.

“There’s a few hundred more in there, Hermione if you’d care to join us,” Harry said innocently.

Hermione’s frown deepened. “I don’t think I want to know,” she said. “Thanks for the offer but I prefer to avoid the risk of falling from a great height.”

“Probably why you’re so much smarter than me,” Harry said, grinning at her. “Less concussions; more brain cells.”

Draco snorted derisively. “She was far smarter than you before you ever got on a broomstick, Potter,” he said. “I’ve never seen Hermione’s potion work literally crawl away from her, and that’s more than I can say for you.”

Harry frowned but Hermione actually laughed. Maybe this was okay, after all, Harry thought.

One huge benefit to living in a rural wizarding village and not in the middle of London, Harry thought as he kicked off the ground and felt the familiar rush, was that you could just get on a broomstick whenever you pleased. You didn’t need to stash your broomstick at your best friend’s house and apparate there to use it. 

_God_ he missed flying, he thought as he lead the way towards the empty lot on the edge of the woods. Someone, probably a bunch of teenagers, had set up crude Quidditch hoops that were a fraction of the height of normal ones. Harry grasped the snitch that was in it’s small locked box in his pocket and released it, chucking the empty box at Draco’s head when he had turned back to look at the hoops. 

“Watch it, Potter!” he exclaimed as the missile missed him by centimetres, thudding to the ground.

Harry streaked into a dive and collected the small, black receptacle and tucked it back into his pocket. “Lost your touch?” he yelled over his shoulder.

Draco sat easily on the Nimbus and scowled as Harry returned to level with him.

“You still haven’t learnt to play fairly, I see,” he remarked, looking around for the snitch as they turned in parallel to climb higher into the sky.

Harry scoffed, looking over at him. “You practically invented cheating, Malfoy. I vividly remember you holding onto my broom at one point. I suppose you must have gotten me mixed up with the snitch.”

“You bloody cheated your way into the team in the first place, scarhead,” Draco exclaimed, as Harry’s face burst into a sly grin at the outrage he had clearly evoked. “First years had been banned from house teams for decades but I suppose I should have known an exception would be made for Harry Potter.”

“Actually it was a century,” Harry replied, feeling very accomplished. Draco rarely lost his cool and this was, apparently, a sore point. “I suppose when you’ve got natural talent-”

“Spare me,” Draco spat, “if the Gryffindor team hadn’t been so pathetic, you never would have got that stupid broom from McGonagall and we all would have been the better for it.”

Harry laughed, to Draco’s renewed incredulity. He used his broom to nudge Draco in the side playfully and the latter scowled even deeper. 

“If there’s anyone to thank for that, its you,” Harry pointed out. “If you’d never been such a bloody prat and stolen that Remembrall-”

“Merlin, don’t remind me,” Draco replied, voice thick with sarcasm. “Don’t even _think_ ,” he continued, spying Harry opening his mouth again in his peripherals, “of mentioning the time you thanked me for it in front of Flitwick.”

Harry just grinned. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

Draco, predictably, rolled his eyes. “It’s _burned_ into my memory, Potter.”

“I quite like being burned into your memory,” Harry replied, happily turning a loop-the-loop and feeling the wind rush through his hair.

“Only because I was insanely jealous of your special treatment,” Draco said, glaring. “Don’t get any ideas.”

They circled the pitch for about an hour, lazily trading insults and occasionally making half hearted attempts to look for the glint of gold. In the end, it was Draco who spied it and spun into a miraculous spiral dive, arm outstretched. 

He really was a talented flier, Harry thought for the briefest of seconds as he shot after Draco, urging his broom forward. He had skill and finesse and he looked _bloody good_ in the air, all sinewy muscle and sleek blond hair. It was almost a shame to beat him. Practically speaking through, Harry had always been a more skilful flier. Plus, the Nimbus was never going to be a serious match for the newest edition of the Firebolt.

Harry, using the brooms additional speed and agility, ducked slightly below Draco to the left and snatched the golden orb from beneath his outstretched hand. Hearing Draco yell some select profanities from behind him, Harry laughed breathlessly as he manoeuvred the broom into a steep dive and pulled up on the outer edge of the trees.

Draco pulled up next to him, bumping him into an outlying tree. Harry pushing himself out of the branches, laughed and tucked the snitch away into his pocket.

“I forgot how much of a sore loser you are,” he said, impishly.

“Who likes losing?” Draco shot back, incredulously. “Especially to _you_.”

“You seem to enjoy it,” Harry replied smugly, much to Draco’s chagrin, “you do it all the time.”

Draco gave him another scathing look. Harry laughed and decided to change tact. 

“Hey,” he asked, spinning his broom around so they faced each other. “Would you say this is a date?”

Draco sat up on his broom and pretended to consider it, crossing his arms. “I think you’re supposed to be nice to people you’re dating, Potter.”

“I’ll try to remember that for next time,” Harry replied, inching closer on his broom.

Draco smirked, uncrossing his arms and leaning forward on his broomstick. “I wasn’t aware there was a next time.”

Harry smiled. “Tomorrow, then,” he said. “We’ll do something conventional. I’ll be extra nice.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “God, Potter, I can’t wait to see your take on conventional.”

Harry beamed. It was as close to a “yes” as he was going to get. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope inspiration strikes to write another one of these. I'd really like Harry to express his feelings properly at some point.


End file.
